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Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide

This guide was created as an overview of the Linux Operating System, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter.
For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration. This book contains many real life examples derived from the author's experience as a Linux system and network administrator, trainer and consultant. They hope these examples will help you to get a better understanding of the Linux system and that you feel encouraged to try out things on your own.

I just installed Slackware 11 onto my friends laptop for him. I gave him a choice of Slackware, SLED10 or Ubuntu Feisty but he wanted Slack because he likes everything he's seen on my HP laptop. I gave him fair warning about hardware detection compared to the other choices and the learning curve so he's ok with that. Now:

Had I known the Toshiba has an sata hard drive I could've saved some time(I used Ubuntu to format it before I found out). The 2.6.17.13 from disc2 panics with a message about "cannot mount root fs...provide a valid root=". I got it booting with the 2.4.33.3 sata.i kernel from disc1. I had to disable hotplug because it would hang there during startup. So now it boots but it has no drivers loaded for network, usb, etc. I'm prepared to compile a 2.6.21.2 specifically for it but it'll be a week before I see it again.

My question is what could be causing hotplug to hang? Do Toshiba laptops require some parameters at the LILO prompt? Is there anything Toshiba-specific I need to do to it when I see it again? I feel bad that he's going to have it for a week without usb, sound or internet access.

I forgot to mention I did try huge26.s with the same error of "cannot mount root fs..." That was the first kernel I tried because I expected it to work for the same reason you gave. When I rebooted from the install disc I noticed the only kernel modules installed were for 2.4.33.3 so I thought that was why huge26 failed and switched to bareacpi.i and finally sata.i.

Note: This is actually the first time I've done a Slackware install since the days of 9.1 so huge26 and anything involving sata are new to me. Slackware is so stable and easy to fix I just haven't had to reinstall in 4 years.